[PenultimateManStanding]

The colors we see form a linear continuum from ultra-violet to infra-red, with decreasing frequency and increasing wavelegth. But in psychological terms, the colors form a wheel and red shades to violet. Furthermore, if you look at colors and then stare at a white surface you see an inverted set of colors that come from the opposite side of the color wheel, the so-called "complementary colors". Is this an example of "intuitive common sense" being a fictional human error?

[ashurbanipal]

http://www.consciousentities.com/octarine.htm

[PenultimateManStanding]

Interesting link, but I didn't see any ideas about how we see the colors as being in a circle when they aren't at all.

[PenultimateManStanding]

So the eye really only sees three "colors". The brain probably creates the continuum around these three colors, hence "the color wheel". This illusion is hard-wired, evidently; how else to explain the complementary color phenomenon? What else about how we see the world is an error of human perception?

[SinisterBlueCat]

I knew a guy that was color blind...I mean completely without the ability to see any color at all, and his vision was unbelievable. Without the distraction of color he could easily see twice or three times as far as a normal person with 20/20 vision.

There is a guy, the original horsewhisper, Monte Roberts, who also has this condition. He has truely astonishing vision, but more amazing is he credits his lack of color vision with his ability to "hear" the subtle cues that horses give him.

[ashurbanipal]

PMS,

I posted the link as a general discussion of the nature of color perception, and the ontological implications of same. I think, building on what was already discussed, we might be able to tease a further argument out of the aesthetic sense of mankind.

The question you posed about us potentially being in error because of our perceptions is made somewhat moot by the considerations undertaken at the link I provided.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ashurbanipal', 'P')MS,
The question you posed about us potentially being in error because of our perceptions is made somewhat moot by the considerations undertaken at the link I provided.

[smallpoxgirl]

No paradox. Just a good example of how human perceptions of the world don't always correspond to physical reality.

We have receptors that percieve three different wavelengths of light. Based on varying activity of those three receptors we create the subjective concept of color. The whole ROY G BIV thing is just us trying to classify various physical wavelengths of radiation based on how we experience them.

This incidentally is the basis of RGB video signalling. In order to fit our perception of the universe, you don't need all the posible frequencies of the visible spectrum. All you need to know is "How much activation of the red cones, how much of the blue, and how much of the green." If dogs ruled the world, there would be no such concept as color, and there would be no need for RGB signaling. Black and white would be considered a complete video signal.

It's no different from the reason we use a base 10 numbering system (10 fingers). I'm told that at least one Inuit group used a base 5 numbering system. (That way you only have to take off one glove at a time.)

[PenultimateManStanding]

The 10 finger example is a good one in that it shows the difference between cultural and physiological adaptations. The color wheel seems, as I was saying, to be hard-wired. The color fatigue thing and complementary colors seem to be a product of our brains assuming the reality of an erroneous interpretation of color, ie. our brain thinks (or acts as if) the colors really are arranged in a circular pattern and that ultra-violet and red actually are 'close' to each other and that blue and yellow are 'opposites'. That's how it appears to me, anyway.

[ashurbanipal]

PMS,

You're applying the correct reasoning, but only on one side of the equation. Human beings invented that linear spectrum as well--the human mind is concerned with such things as wavelength and relative proportions. That's simply another means of our perceiving and organizing our perceptual phenomena. Neither the linear means of organization or the "wheel" means of organization is actual reality--we can't ever know what "actual reality" is.

In that link, one of the characters talks about pigeons perceiving more colors than we do. Of course, we can't know the phenomenal experience of a pigeon, but we can be fairly sure it's probably not very similar to ours. The phenomenal experience of a bat is less so, and that of a tree much less so (so much less so that we might be inclined to think that trees don't have experience). Which "version" of reality is correct? Ours? Why are we justified in assuming that?

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ashurbanipal', '
')
Neither the linear means of organization or the "wheel" means of organization is actual reality--we can't ever know what "actual reality" is.

Which "version" of reality is correct? Ours? Why are we justified in assuming that?

[ashurbanipal]

PenultimateManStanding,

Actually, that means of organizing the EM spectrum was probably determined (albeit unconsciously) with our method of doing mathematics.

Science is like any other human activity, which means the foremost thing to be kept in mind is that human beings are the ones who do it.

Anyway, to your specific point:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'w')e have models showing the EM spectrum stretching far out into both the ultraviolet and infrared; a linear model for all intents and purposes, no?

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ashurbanipal', '
')Some very smart philosophers and scientists believe that if the observational consequences are exactly the same, then the statements that make T and T' must be logically equivalent. Some equally smart philosophers and scientists think otherwise. I happen to fall into the latter camp

[ashurbanipal]

If it's a subject you're interested in, I can post what I think is a pretty ironclad argument for indeterminism.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ashurbanipal', 'I')f it's a subject you're interested in, I can post what I think is a pretty ironclad argument for indeterminism.

[ashurbanipal]

I meant, there's an argument already extant in the literature that I'd be happy to explain. I ask because it bears on the subject at hand, but it takes quite a bit of explaining, and some people don't have the stomach to sit through a whole bunch of philosophy.

[PenultimateManStanding]

I remember reading some philosophy about indeterminism. The idea was that each layer of reality is determined to the extent that the natural laws that govern it apply, but that not all possible behavior is determined by these laws as there is a gap in the determinism, a free zone of indeterminism, as it were, which allows for a higher layer to develop its own laws. Chemical laws arise from the indeterminate span of physical laws. Biological laws arise from the indeterminate span of chemical laws. Human phenomena arise from the indeterminate span of biological laws. Basically a fine argument against reductionism.

[ashurbanipal]

That sounds like an argument against functionalism (specifically its requirement that the universe be causally closed). Indeterminism is just the theory I briefly outlined earlier-namely that for any given set of observational consequences, two entirely different theories could be posited to account for all and only those consequences. Thus, we will never be able to determine which theory is true. We choose our theories by convention--not because we understand the thing in itself.

The classic argument (in fact, this is how indeterminism got recognized as a serious problem) was between Minkowski and Eddington. Minkowski showed that spaced was curved in the manner predicted by Reimann, and that thus Euclid's fifth postulate was incorrect. He did this by showing that rays of light curve slightly instead of following a straight line. Eddington argued that Euclid was correct, there were just universal forces that made the light curve through a Euclidian space--or at least, that's the theory we should prefer as it is the simpler of the two (which isn't at all clear). Pierre Duhem and W.V.O. Quine recognized that both theories could account for our observations, and so we would never be able to determine whether spacetime is actually Reimannian or Euclidian with forces that make things bend in a Reimannian manner. So we can, even in principle, never know which is correct.

The reply made by such men as Moritz Schlick and Rudolph Carnap is that, in that case, the two theories are really the same theory. But it doesn't seem that's the case, especially in light of a hypothetical third theory: T' ridiculous. Imagine a theory that posits some truly ridiculous circumstance that would cause light to bend--like, for instance, that invisible aliens always make it bend the right way so as to make space seem Reimannian. It doesn't seem like that theory is the same as saying that space is Reimannian. Schlick and Carnap would simply dismiss this line of reasoning, but even though it's a bit far fetched, I think it does have serious implications for how we understand what science does and the nature of our accumulated knowledge.

If we understand theories to be proposals for how the universe actually is, indeterminism turns out to be a very serious issue indeed--it seems to provide a compelling reason to think we can never know how the universe really is. This is not unexpected; it turns out that David Hume and Emmanuel Kant had a kind of posthumous conversation that entails exactly this.

But this doesn't mean that science is useless--far from it: it turns out to be one of the most useful means of acquiring knowledge. It's just that "knowledge" turns out to mean that we can substitute terms and find phenomenal relationships. But our models are tailored to be intelligible to our minds (which is not surprising). So when we look at the EM spectrum as a linear spectrum or on a color wheel, those are both just ways of organizing the phenomena we observe. They tell us nothing about the actual nature of the spectrum or other relevant factors--we can't find out about that.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ashurbanipal', '
')in light of a hypothetical third theory: T' ridiculous. Imagine a theory that posits some truly ridiculous circumstance that would cause light to bend--like, for instance, that invisible aliens always make it bend the right way so as to make space seem Reimannian.

[ashurbanipal]

Not precisely. It's the conceivability of T' ridiculous that is the problem. The fact that we can conceive such a theory indicates that our commonsense epistemic notions about science aren't as well supported as we thought.